May 20, 2009

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May 20, 2009

CIS and ReUse Cart Summer Maintenance reminder

Summer is coming and many of our customers take time off from their printers. If you are using a CIS or ReFillable large format carts, I want to remind you about important Summer maintenance issues with printers.

All pigment ink has a tendency to settle. While Epson warns its customers to discard ink cartridges within six months of inserting in a printer, we are encouraging you to either use a bulk ink system or a reuse cart. This subjects you to greater pigment settling issues. Of course you save money and do your part for the environment. But we need to remind you about pigment inks and long term use.

Because your ink remains in use for longer than six months (the Epson cartridge packaging actually says “Open this package only when you install the enclosed cartridge”, “for best printing results use up this cartridge within six months of opening this package” “For best results, shake the ink cartridge package 4 or 5 times before opening”), you need to occasionally shake your CIS bottles and ReUse carts. You should do this gently so as not to cause the ink to end up on you or the room. But, it is a critical part of bulk ink maintenance and we suggest this gentle agitation every 2-3 weeks. Some customers report that they actually shake their entire printer rather than remove the bulk carts.

The larger problem is how to shut down an Epson printer for a prolonged period of time. As you know, the Epson printer spends a great amount of its time doing various automated cleaning procedures. Of course it also wastes between 10 - 25% of the ink doing this. But this is how piezo heads are kept open. When you leave your printer unattended there are two areas of concern. First, pigment settling within the ink lines, bottles and carts. Second, print head pigment settling.

For the former, when you return your printer from a prolonged period of inactivity you must assure that you do not feed ink which has settled into the ink lines and heads. CIS systems and bulk ink carts feed ink from the bottom. Before you do anything, please remove the ReUse carts and gently shake them - or take the CIS bottles and gently agitate them. The next procedure would be to perform head cleanings that promote the greatest amount of ink movement. In small format printers this is not possible as there are no options other than a standard head clean. In large format printers you can utilize the maintenance menu to perform advanced head cleanings so not only are the heads flushed with ink, but fresh ink is brought through the ink lines. Please consult your manual.

Our recommendation for leaving a printer unattended for more than a month will be to place the printer in storage condition. In this case, you would pass a storage and cleaning fluid such as our PiezoFlush into the ink lines and into the print heads and then turn off the printer. For large format printers, PiezoFlush can be loaded into ReUse carts. For small format printers, it is only necessary to remove the CIS and drain back the ink into the bottles. PiezoFlush filled cartridges are available for some printer models or A syringe can be fitted to the print head stems and PiezoFlush gently moved into the print head through a tube.

When you return to initialize your printer with inks you would remove the PiezoFlush carts and install the ink carts and perform advanced head cleanings that will move fresh ink to the print heads. In the case of the CIS, you simply repeat the installation instructions. Your printer should immediately be usable for high quality printing.

These suggestions are not given because you are using a third-party ink. We would give the same advice to any customer using OEM inks (Epson even recommends flushing their inks when a printer is not used for prolonged period of time- they actually RENT flushing/storage cartridges) and planning on leaving their printer unattended. The internet is filled with reports from users who have created unattended printing apps which print out an 8.5x11 print each day at a set time. This type of utility procedure is done to avoid pigment settling, etc. However, you do leave the risk of a failure in the automation process.

Printer maintenance is subject to many variables such as excessive heat and humidity as well as altitude. One user's experience can not often be used to judge what your experience might be. We are offering these suggestions as a precaution based upon the collective experience of our customers as well as our own experience in operating Cone Editions Press as a fine art inkjet printing studio since 1991.

In any event, I do hope you have a chance to take some time for yourself this Summer. I am planning on rebuilding the Cone Editions Press. We are in the middle of a technology sweep replacing older printers with new and integrating new Rolands and Mutohs into our mix. We maintain on average about 15 inkjet printers which we use to print our customer's images.

I can tell you from experience that no two printers are alike, but each has its own maintenance requirements that must be followed. Our printers are like puppies which very quickly adapt to its human's habits and become disappointed when the habits of its owners are not repeated. We have actually named each and every one of our printers because when we move them or rearrange them, their maintenance issues follow. Their names remind us about their quirks and we do not confuse two different printers of the same model. If only it was as easy as putting the printer in its crate or spreading newspapers out near them. ;)

Please feel free to follow up with InkjetMall technical support about your own maintenance questions (techsupport (at) inkjetmall (dot) com has some pre-written instructions on long term printer + CIS storage as well as large format printer flushing). We are making up a new batch of PiezoFlush at this time and will be ready for those of you who require cart sets and bottles to put your printers into storage.

Finally, let me take this opportunity again to remind you that we are now importing print heads, dampers, capping stations etc for large format Epson printers. The order delay is about one week. You can find these parts on our Support page of the Website.

Happy printing!

Jon Cone
InkjetMall